3

I work for a company that mainly sells city and state art transfer-printed, etched, engraved, etc. onto dinnerware.

Most of the time i deal with the art, personally, i see that it contains anywhere from 15,000-30,000 paths but have no problems working with them quickly . However, one of our artist's illustrations always has a tremendous amount of paths in the 150,000-250,000 range...and i wanted to see if there was anything i could do.

What I have tried

  1. Fix bad plug-in global object names(no idea what this meant, just saw it here
  2. Object>Path>simplify (made sure to not include text outlines. Has never worked in a year's worth of attempts.)
  3. Object>Path>Clean up : says it isn't needed.

Image below is of Sixteen pieces of artwork for a square dinner plate. Here is a link to a single piece of artwork from that product, so you can take a look and hopefully help me out.

Do you see anything i can correct in the file supplied? enter image description here

0

2 Answers 2

4

Simple steps for that file... although that file isn't problematic here.

First fix the type counters on the arch by filling them with white. Then . . .

  • Select All
  • Object > Expand
  • Pathfinder Panel > Merge
  • Click a white filled object (with the Direct Select Tool - white arrow)
  • Select > Same > Fill & Stroke
  • Hit Delete
  • Draw a no fill, no stroke rectangle
  • Select > Same > Fill & Stroke
  • Hit Delete

This removes at least 50% of the objects in the file.

2
  • Scott, you're my hero. I just did this to the artwork for one of our Cape Cod products. Started with 240,000 paths, down to 159,000. I can confirm this one was an example of a source file we lost and had to have it retraced from a raster..so it makes sense to still have a LOT of paths...but this was a HUGE difference in terms of rendering performance. You're the man scott...THE MAN.
    – mephisto21
    Oct 16, 2014 at 13:58
  • I'm glad that helped, @orbitalshocK
    – Scott
    Oct 16, 2014 at 14:54
0

If it's for the cause of simplifying paths, I find Inkscape does a much better job then Illustrator. You would need to export it to svg from Illustrotor, import it into inkscape and I suggest you try it one path first: select it and hit CTRL+L. It will tell how many 'nodes' it found and how many are left after simplifying. (Or you can use the menu: Path --> Simplify)

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.